Most Americans picture the Amazon River as a wild, dark place
where large snakes slither on tree limbs over murky water
teeming with piranhas and crocodiles. This is true in places.
But University of Georgia students there this summer saw this
developing area as much more.

"You can read about a place and someone's culture until you're
blue in the face," said Susannah Martin, a junior agribusiness
major in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences. "But until you see it firsthand, you don't
understand."

Five UGA and five Iowa State students attended "Sustainable
Systems in Brazil," a 20-day course taught by the CAES Office of
Global Programs in partnership with ISU. Two UGA and two ISU
instructors led the group.

The course is designed to give students a cultural experience in
another country, said Daniel Markewitz, the course instructor
and a professor with the UGA Warnell School of Forest
Resources. "This gives them a better understanding of the world
and happens by osmosis by just going on the trip."

Sustainable?

The students investigate whether people can use natural
resources in a sustainable way. No country is struggling with
this question more than Brazil today.

Over the past two decades, Brazil has become South America's
leading economic power. Roughly the size of the continental
United States, it has developed largely on its use of natural
resources like timber, minerals and land to grow cattle and
soybeans.

The group arrived in Recife on June 26. On Brazil's northeastern
coast, this city of 3 million is called the "Venice of Brazil"
for its many canals and bridges. Students and professors from
the Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco hosted the group.

Around Recife, the students studied an Atlantic rain forest, a
sugar cane plantation and a coral reef. They also visited the
homes of a small farmer and a poor woman who made her living
making pottery.

"It was difficult at first to make friends," said Túlio Toscano,
a UFRPE student. "But I think we're all friends now. We
exchanged much knowledge and found out we think the same about
many things."

Amazon dynamic

On July 4, the group traveled to Santarem in the Amazon basin in
northern Brazil.

They first hiked through an Amazon rain forest, where they saw
the effects of selective timber harvesting and a study on
potential impacts of drought in the area. They viewed the forest
canopy, too, from a 150-foot tower.

For eight days, the group traveled on a boat, where they slept
in hammocks and ate most of their meals. Many swam and bathed in
the river.

West of Santarem, they visited the Mineraçâo Rio de Norte, the
world's largest bauxite mine, and the city of 6,000 it supports.
They learned about a project to replant the forest the mining
process destroys.

The students visited several riverside communities. The
Quilombolas, descendants of African slaves who escaped their
Brazilian owners 200 years ago, make a meager living from the
river and land. The 400 people of Urucuera are developing
ecotourism with help from an organization called Health and
Happiness.

In Monte Alegre, east of Santarem, students studied 12,000-year-
old paintings on cave walls and heard how naturally high
radioactive levels affect the people there.

In Santarem, they spoke to a local activist who opposes the
area's new soybean boom. Then they visited a controversial $20
million soybean-loading terminal owned by Cargill, a Minnesota-
based conglomerate.

Gustavo Negreiros, a Brazilian who is an academic coordinator
for the Vermont-based School for International Training, guided
the group's Amazon trip.

"I'm often shocked at (Americans') lack of understanding of what
really goes on in the Amazon," Negreiros said, citing "many
myths and legends."

The Amazon is more than just animals, forest and water, he
said. "There are people here, too, with successes and struggles."

(Brad Haire is the former news editor with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)